Holiday Inn Express & Suites Dearborn SW - Detroit Area — Hotel in Dearborn

My family and I stayed at the Dearborn Holiday Inn on Saturday, 7/10. We had a very difficult experience and I was told on Sunday that a manager would be in contact with me.  I also emailed the manager and have received no response 4 days later.

We checked in on Saturday evening without issue but were hit with a very strong smoke smell the second we opened the door to our room, 314. We called down to the front desk and asked if there was possibly any other rooms that we could switch to due to the smell. The woman working the front desk said there were no other rooms available but she would see what she could do. We took our children, 5, 8 and 11, to the pool to play for a little bit and then came back to the room to get them showered and in bed as it was 10 pm. We had decided to just deal with the smell as we needed to get our kids to bed. As I pulled the towels out from under the counter for showers numerous chocolate covered candy bar wrappers came out with them. I have attached a photo. This is really gross in general given that it shows the room was not thoroughly cleaned but especially concerning during a pandemic. These wrappers had clearly been licked and shoved into the towels. There was also a lot of crumbs and pieces of food on the floor and in the corners. 

My Mom who was also staying at the hotel along with a number of other family members happened to be checking in on us to say goodnight to the kids right then and offered to check in at the front desk again to see if there were any other options for rooms. She was told by the same woman that she was very sorry and would work on getting a room cleaned as they are short staffed. She said it would be about 20 minutes. 

As it was now going on 11 pm my husband decided to head down to the front desk after about 20 minutes thinking if he could just grab the key to the new room he would be helping by saving the staff the trip. Instead he found that no one had started cleaning a room yet and it would be another 15-20 minutes. He was obviously a bit frustrated at this point as we have 3 young children that were exhausted. While he headed back to the room I received a call on the room phone from the woman at the front desk who was extremely irritated with us. She said that we need to give her the time to clean the room in order for her to make the issue right. I was confused since it my husband hadn't even made it back to the room to tell me a new room was delayed further. I could barely say ok before she slammed the phone down in my ear. At this point I had been sitting in a wet swimsuit for an hour while getting my children ready for bed and repacking all of our things so I decided to take a quick shower. As I was getting out the room phone rang again and a man from the front desk stated that they were still working on the room and it would be at least another 35 minutes. At this point my two youngest kids were practically in tears from being tired so we put them in bed and my husband called down and said we appreciate it but our kids are utterly exhausted so we will just deal with the smell and gross issues. Less than 5 minutes later our kids were tucked in when someone hammers on the room door startling all of us. The pounding was so loud that my mother who was in the room below us heard it. We open the door to the woman from the front desk and a security guard. She was extremely angry with us stating that she had stayed past her shift to get a room clean for us, that she was the only person that could clean a room and that now that she is 5-10 minutes away from being finished we said we don't want it. I tried to calmly explain that the man at the front desk had just told us it would be another 35 minutes at least so it seemed like a miscommunication issue. I said we are not trying to be difficult, we just wanted a clean place for our children. She just kept getting angrier and asked if we wanted the new room or not. My husband stated that if it was really going to be done within ten minutes then we would gladly take the room and thanked her. She stormed away while the security guard apologized.

At this point I was trying to hold back tears at being berated and very tired myself. It was almost 11:30 pm. 

We became very aware that she was cleaning the room directly above us as she began slamming things around. 15-20 minutes later the security guard lightly knocked on the door and said the room was ready and asked if my husband wanted to take a look and make sure the key card worked. He went upstairs and passed the woman from the front desk as the security guard was speaking to him. After she passed him she said very rudely, "YOU'RE WELCOME!" Again, the guard apologized. 

The card worked and the room didn't smell of smoke so he came and got us. We grabbed all of our things and our children and took the elevator upstairs at about 11:45 pm. She was by the elevators with the cleaning cart as we got out and I said thank you over the pile of items in my arms and continued down the hallway. She said to my oldest child, very sarcastically, "Have a great night."

We fortunately were able to get everyone to sleep just after midnight but I laid awake trying to figure out what we did so wrong for an hour. We were all exhausted for our family event we had the next day. 

The woman at the front desk on Sunday morning was very kind and apologetic. She said that she sent all the notes to the manager asking that he call me to discuss but I have not heard from anyone. This was an exceptionally bad experience where we were made to feel like we were horrible people asking for completely unreasonable things. I understand that everyone is short staffed currently but there was no justification for how we were treated. All we wanted was a clean place to sleep for the night. I won't even get into the piece of metal my daughter punctured her foot on in the pool (we made sure to find and remove it) or the small piece of what looked to be feces floating at the bottom of...

I had garbage sitting outside of our room for two days. The staff was very rude. I went to the front desk to ask if my sheets could be changed, and I was told I had to stay there for 7 days. I checked in on Wednesday and asked this question on Saturday. While speaking to the front desk staff, I had someone from another room yelling responses to me. I left and came back 5 minutes later to ask for the GM information. I found out that the person that was yelling responses from the office was the general manager. When he came out of the office, he was unprofessional. I asked if I would have to wait 7 days as a platinum elite member and his response was, "I do not care what your status is". He then started to tell me I was assaulting his staff. I only asked his staff 3 questions. I told the GM that he was very rude and unprofessional. He told me I could leave if I want. I informed him that I did not intend to leave since my 3-year-old was there for a wedding. I went back to my room. A little over an hour I received a call at my room from the front desk. I was told that the GM canceled my reservation, and I would be escorted out by the police. I informed the front desk that I did not do anything wrong, and we have a wedding to attend. I asked to speak to the general manager and the staff said he was in a meeting. The GM canceled my reservation because I told him that he was very rude and unprofessional. I recorded the initial interaction which I sent to a couple of news outlets. I ended up packing up our things and had to check into the Hampton Inn. When we left the hotel there were 3 police officers in the front. Again, there was no threat to staff or property. It was an unprofessional manager that was embarrassed because I told him, if he was the GM, it is rude to be yelling responses from his office. I also told him that he doesn't need to yell his responses, and I could tell he did not care about his job. He used his authority to rudely throw us out and called the police. I was embarrassed to leave the hotel after all these years I have used IHG. and I did nothing wrong but ask the front desk staff questions about the cleaning. Thank god I have a video of the initial interaction and the follow-up conversation. DO NOT STAY HERE. Customers complained the...

Upon arrival at 4:30pm was told at the check-in counter that we had to wait 5min because they weren't sure if the rooms were cleaned yet?! Website states 3pm check-in so there should have been ample time to just check us in. Not to mention that when we checked back in 5 min they were busy checking someone else in?? The lobby seems to open to vagrants and we were bothered by some lady that kept following us and trying to talk to us from the parking lot into the hotel.||The hotel is more aged than it appears in the photos. The building picture has to be the project concept photo as it was not this "brand new" looking in person. ||We stayed in room 318 which seemed to have a decent amount of road noise during the night but not terrible. The room was reasonably clean but the office chair at the desk was completely destroyed and super uncomfortable. ||The room is nice and large with a couch, coffee table, microwave, fridge, bar sink and counter. Also bonus had a small table for eating if needed. Bedroom area would benefit from having a larger TV. Big downside, you can NOT change inputs so using a Prime firestick or any other HDMI device is not available and the remote has NO sleep timer!!||The bed was super comfy!!! Pillows were also excellent. ||Washroom is adequate and reasonably clean but could use a DEEP clean and re-caulk in corners. ||The hotel has the European "leave your keycard" in the slot by the door if you want power and lights in your room. Suggest to get at least 2 door cards so you can leave one in the room if you go out. Otherwise you may come back to a warm room. ||Breakfast is free - Good selection of hot food including sausages and scrambled eggs. It looked like there was supposed to be biscuits and gravy as well but there were no biscuits only gravy. There was also lots of juices, milk, hard boiled eggs, bagels, english muffins and cereal. There wasn't any fresh fruit. ||Parking is free||Internet speed is average but not super fast. Email and light surfing ok and even YouTube streaming if you handle the occasional buffering. ||For the price this place is quite reasonable. Our sleep was great and overall experience was great but...